CEDAW, BPFA, MDG Toolkit
Download MDG, CEDAW and BPFA Toolkit

I created this Toolkit for the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), local member association of the IPPF (International Planned Parenthood federation) in 2005 as part of a project on the Beijing Platform for Action and the MDGs.

Feminist Legal Theory for Beginners by Ann Bartow
Mood:  energetic
Original Post here

Feminist Legal Theory For Beginners?

I got a nice and very funny e-mail from an FLP reader who asked whether this blog could begin posting accessible overviews of feminist legal theory for folks who are interested but haven’t been exposed before. It’s an interesting idea and I’m thinking about useful ways to approach such a project. For now, I’m going to list some books that I think do a pretty good job of laying out the basics. If anyone has other recommendations, by all means leave them in the comments or e-mail them to me and I’ll add them to the list.

Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory (2d edition) by Martha Chamallas (Aspen 2003). This book is a kind of treatise, written by one person in a consistent and largely neutral voice, that provides an overview of the basic concepts of feminist legal theory. I think Martha Chamallas did a great job of explaining a lot of complicated concepts in clear, accessible language, and it’s a terrific primer for beginnners. If I was going to teach Feminist Legal Theory to students who were not necessarily feminists, or positively inclined towards feminism themselves, this would be the book I’d rely on initially.


Feminist Legal Theory: A Primer, by Nancy Levit and Robert R.M. Verckick (NYU Press 2006). This book is also excellent. It describes the intersection of feminism and specific social issues in somewhat greater detail than the Chamallas book, with a bit more authorial viewpoint. If someone was teaching Feminist Legal Theory to students who had self-selected into a course because they were specifically interested in feminism, this book would be a great choice.


Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, edited by Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy (Westview 1991),


Feminist Legal Theory Foundations, edited by D. Kelly Weisberg (Temple U. Press 1993); and


Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader, edited By Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs (NYU Press 2003).


These three books are collections of articles and essays by a wide range of feminist legal scholars on a variety of compelling topics. Most of the constituent works of all three books were written for an audience that already knows something about feminist legal theory, although each book also contains a few relatively introductory offerings. The Bartlett & Kennedy and Weisberg books contain very diverse voices and topics, while the Dowd & Jabobs book is more narrowly focused on works that are expressly anti-essentialist (i.e. discuss the impact on and importance to feminism of differences between women).

There are a lot of other terrific books about feminist legal theory, but these are my initial recommendations for newcomers to the field.

–Ann Bartow

UPDATE: Another great book for teaching purposes is a text book: Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (4th edition) by Katharine Bartlett and Deborah Rhode (Aspen 2006). Feminist law prof Vernellia Randall has taught a “Gender and the Law” course using earlier editions of this book, and her 2004 course website is accessible here.

LAW 131 QUIZ on August 18, 2006

Reading Assignment: August 18, 2006

After Legal Consciousness by Susan S. Silbey, Annu.Rev.Soc.Sci.2005 1:323-68

 TIP: This is an open notes quiz. Give yourself time to reflect on the reading. 

On-line Resources on Feminist Legal Theory
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Active links
Feminist jurisprudence - Wex
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Feminist_jurisprudence

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
http://www.yale.edu/lawnfem/law&fem.html

Emory Law School: Feminism & Legal Theory
http://www.law.emory.edu/cms/site/index.php?id=1125/

University of Iowa Law Journal on Gender,Race,and Justice
http://www.law.uiowa.edu/journals/grj/

Legal Theory
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/sg_thry.htm

Feminist Legal Theory
http://it.stlawu.edu/~kpphilc/legal/legal.html

Feminist Legal Theory Network Website 2003
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/law/femlegalnet/educate.htm

Black American Feminisms
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subjects/blackfeminism/soc_legaltheory.html

Critical Legal Studies on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_legal_studies

Feminist Law and Jurisprudence
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/law.html

Gender and the Law
http://academic.udayton.edu/gender/

Pathfinder:Feminist Legal Studies
http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/~library/pathfind/fem_p.htm

Feminist Legal Theory Foundations (Book Summaries)
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/law1.html

Sunshine for Women Homepage
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/main.html

Feminist Journals
http://faculty.law.ubc.ca/boyd/flr2.htm

Back to the Feminist Legal Theory and Practice Website
https://karolruiza.tripod.com/index.html